Get ready for non-stop action, edge-of-your-seat suspense and spectacular chase sequences with everyone’s favorite assassin in The Bourne Trilogy! Matt Damon is Jason Bourne, an elite government agent determined to outwit and outmaneuver anyone who stands in the way of his finding out the secrets of his mysterious past. Follow his explosive, action-packed adventures in three blockbuster films from one of the most popular series of all time: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and

The best-selling factual series of all time is now even better! Planet Earth took the world by storm when it originally aired. It garnered uniformly glowing reviews, won four Emmy Awards, including Best Nonfiction Series and Best Cinematography, and its longevity on the best-seller list is legend. Now, with the addition of all new commentary and new bonus programs, you can relive this incredible experience all over again! From the highest mountains to the deepest oceans, Planet Earth illuminates

First off, let me say Thank you to Amazon for clarifying that the great David Attenborough is the narrator for this series. No Attenborough would have meant no purchase on my part. Simply put the most amazing documentary on life and animals and the world around us that I have ever seen. The clarity is simply breathtaking(and that was on my tv brodcast which was in 720P…the HD transfers are in 1080p!!!!).A huge tahnak you to the creators and producers for doing this for people like myself and many others who care deeply about the world around us.
My one minor complaint has to do with the fact that on the HD transfers, there is absent the supplemental material that is present on the standard defintion release. There is no 110 minutes of behind the scenes footage of what took place on these excavations to these wonderous places or interviews with the people, Attenborough or anyone for that matter. The other special feature not found on either the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD transfer is Planet Earth: The Future, which is a 150 minute documentary(Shot entirely in high defintion mind you) which chronicles how the whole series was created, and how we can continue to preserve our earth so that we may continue to have wonderous documentaries like this for our children’s children. Finally, amazingly there are charging the HD customers around $25 MORE for a product that has LESS content than on the standard defintion release.
Otherwise highly reccomended presentation that is extremely addictive and immeasureably sensational from the first scene to the last. Its simply amazes me the beauty of God’s creations.

Never have I been so moved by a series to exclaim in wonder and actually shed tears of joy at the beauty that surrounds us on this wonderful planet.

I have been watching it on Discovery HD Theater when it premiered in March. The first episode “Pole to Pole” set the tone by showing the range of life and species that exist on this planet. The subsequent episodes delve into the habitats one by one. Mountains, Fresh Water, Caves, Deserts, Ice Worlds, Great Plains, Jungles, Shallow Seas, Seasonal Forests and Deep Ocean are the subsequent episodes. This is one series that has to be seen to be believed of what the intrepid cameramen of BBC/Discovery Channel have been able to capture through their sheer perseverance in remote locations. The HD technology has captured some scenes and images never seen before and some seen before but never with this clarity and beauty. 5 years, 62 countries and 204 locations is what it took to make this series, and the result is a lifetime TV series.

This is one series that fascinated my kid as much as it amazed me. She wanted to watch her cartoons but the moment the episode began she was captivated. Both of us shared together the wonder that is our Planet and it was she who brought up the subject of what we might be doing to it by our actions. We cried when we saw how polar bears have begun to drown as ice melts faster every year. The image of one lone bear trying to walk on ice but falling into the slushy waters, and having to swim longer distances to capture food and finally dying with exhaustion was heart breaking. The series makes no references to the present conditions, just in passing as with the polar bear. I think the directors and producers of the series just wanted to show us the beauty of the natural world, the fight for survival of several animals even when there is no climactic change. And as we keep watching and are filled with awe and wonderment that we’re lucky enough to live on this planet, we begin to appreciate quietly in our hearts how we need to change today to ensure that we save our planet.

That is what my daughter felt on her own, she asked me why we were not doing more to save our natural world and I did not have any good answers. The last 3 episodes, Planet Earth: The Future delve deeper into these issues, which I haven’t had a chance to see yet.

I watched a clip of David Attenborough’s version video on the web before I started watching the series with Sigourney Weaver’s narration, and I was disappointed by her blandness and lack of depth. I bought this set like many others to listen to Sir David’s narration. I was torn between the regular DVD set and the HD DVD though. This series is good enough to make me buy an HD DVD player just to be able to watch it in its true form! However, the regular set has the Future series and the Planet Earth diaries which the HD set does not have. I loved the Planet Earth Diaries (or behind the scenes) with cameramen, it made a fascinating documentary on it’s own, and wished some were longer. If they had the extra material in the HD DVD set, it would have been my first choice.

I had saved the Discovery HD Theatre epidodes on my HD Cable box and I was able to compare their image quality with this Standard DVD version playing on an upconverting DVD player. The Discovery Theater images were crystal clear, and you could literally see each grain of sand on the sea bed or each crevice on a rock face. The Standard DVD looked pretty good when upconverted to 720p and if I had not seen the HD version I would have been quite amazed with the image quality. Right now I’ve been spoilt by the Discovery Theater version. If you’re considering the HD version it’s a great choice if you have an HD DVD/BluRay player. You’ll probably not see a better HD disc. This series was shot completely in HD format. From my experience in the media industry I can tell you that this is a very, very expensive format to shoot in especially given the 5 years that it took to make this series. Most television is shot in a regular digital format and then upconverted to the HD format later. That gives great images but they cannot compare to something shot totally in HD. That is the reason the image quality of this series is spectacular. In HD they were able to capture the action which when replayed in slow-motion also stays crystal clear. Therefore you have breathtaking images of a shark capturing its prey (and many others) in slo-mo.

This really is the set to buy. It’s like a living documentation of the beauty of our earth, some of which was starting to disappear right as the cameras were rolling. Perhaps, that is why BBC and Discovery spared no cost to produce this series and it is a masterpiece.

I couldn’t figure out how to open this set. I was tugging on the sides. Then I tried to slip the case off vertically. I was on the verge of forcing open the box when I decided to google the set, hoping to see something about the packaging scheme since there is no clear indication as to how to open it. Before you force this thing open, take note: The cover image of Matt Damon is a magnet. It flips open to the left, allowing access to the discs. Enjoy.

Note: Since combining all 3 movies into one review will take me over the character limit, there are two options you can take. 1) you can read this shorter overview of the box set as a whole. Or 2) you can read the reviews for the individual flipper releases that are much more detailed in terms of movie, video, audio, and extras ratings.

Movie – 4.5

The Bourne franchise is a very entertaining and gritty entry that re-infuses a lot of what was missing in the spy/thriller genre. It has just the right mix of conspiracy, politics, action, drama, romance, and a personal enough narrative to keep audiences empathizing for one Jason Bourne. In Identity, we’re introduced to Bourne and given a mystery to solve; who is he, how did he come to end up where he is, and where will he go from there to find out the rest? In Supremacy, he’s established something of an Identity, but still has a long way to go. In the process of finding himself he loses something very dear to him and seeks vengeance as a result. However, in his pursuit he discovers more of his past and realizes that it’s a very dark one. And through this discovery he decides to redeem himself as well as go after the persons he feels are responsible for this constant cycle of killing. And finally, Ultimatum is the culmination of it all where the pieces come together: Bourne finds out who he really is, discovers the system of conditioning behind this government conspiracy, tracks it down to the origin, and comes to terms with himself for who he is and what he’s become at that point. This series of films is successful thanks in huge part to the acting talents of Matt Damon, whom I’ve personally doubted, but have since been a fan of after seeing The Departed. Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass also do excellent jobs in directing their respective films. As an overarching storyline, the narrative has a very good flow of progression and is recommended that when you watch these films you try to do so within a short or consecutive amount of time to get the full effect of the plot.

Video – 4.5

As with the films themselves from a writing standpoint, the video also has a certain level of progression. Identity, while still very good, is probably the worst of the three. Colors, black levels, and contrast all look excellent, but the overall image tends to suffer from various amounts of noise and occasional instances of artifacting and debris. The little specks aren’t as prevalent as some older catalog titles, but for a BD presentation on such a great film, it can be distracting at times. Subsequently, Supremacy gets better and looks much richer in terms of everything else, minus the debris. Image detail is notably much sharper and tends to reveal some of the finer qualities within the picture. The only slight inconsistencies one might point out as detractors, though, are some noisier scenes in the dark and possibly some excessive bits of color saturation during the shots in India. But on the flip side, Ultimatum looks as pristine as can be. All of the aforementioned video elements are stunning, and much of the photography is preserved to perfection resulting in a reference level picture. A nice theatrical layer of film grain is present through all three films, but in my opinion, really accentuates the gritty nature of the franchise best via Ultimatum’s video transfer. Just know that what you’re getting is a good representation of progression, not just in story, but also video-wise.

Audio – 5.0

While the video has to improve throughout each movie, the audio, on the other hand, is excellent from the start. Again, Identity appears as the weakest of the bunch, but only so slightly. And it’s not even a question of the transfer, but a result of the overall sound design in general. Each film has a particularly great sense of musical immersion thanks to John Powell’s enthralling score. The whirring effect in Identity and the pounding drums throughout Supremacy and Ultimatum are sure to get viewers into the films’ plots and make for some adventurous movie-watching. Sound effects are also very well-handled. Background chatter, city noise, car engines, feet shuffling, water drops, flying paper, and all sorts of commotion fill the sound scape enveloping the viewer within the world of Jason Bourne. And that’s just without all the action sequences. Punches, kicks, whacks, thuds, crunches, gunshots, crashing vehicles, shattering glass, and heavy breathing dominate when they should, but never overwhelm. Dialogue, a more integral piece to the films, is also spot-on and suffers no dropout or distortion from the center channel. But in terms of directionality and separation, all three films exert these elements extremely well through the front and side speakers, and even more so in the second and third installments. LFEs aren’t a very big part of the overall sound design, but really make their mark when the occasional…